{"slug": "nix-snapshotter", "name": "nix-snapshotter", "category": "infra", "category_name": "Infrastructure and DevOps", "description": "", "recommenders": 3, "commenters": 3, "warners": 0, "score": 2.422, "rising": -0.98, "first": "2025-11-16", "latest": "2025-12-18", "why": "create super lightweight containers using nix-snapshotter", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 0, "compare": 0, "warn": 0}, "spark": [2, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "create super lightweight containers using nix-snapshotter", "kind": "", "icon": true, "domain": null, "github_repo": "github.com/pdtpartners/nix-snapshotter", "official_url": "https://github.com/pdtpartners/nix-snapshotter", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["nix-snapshotter"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 741054689, "item_id": 46315918, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46315918", "by": "madjam002", "date": "2025-12-18", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "create super lightweight containers using nix-snapshotter", "excerpt": "Definitely don't recommend going down this path if you're not already familiar with Nix, but if you are, a strategy that I find works really well is to package your software with Nix, then you can run it easily via systemd but also create super lightweight containers using nix-snapshotter[0] so you don't have to \"build\" container images if you still want the flexibility of containers. You can then run the containers ", "context": "", "use_case": "Lightweight containers from Nix", "switched_from": "", "story": "Systemd v259"}, {"id": 735155282, "item_id": 45947205, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45947205", "by": "jeremy_flox", "date": "2025-11-16", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Tools like nix-snapshotter, Nixery, and others have pioneered this space and we're grateful for that work.", "excerpt": "Jeremy from Flox, here, I want to chime in here so Ron can be with his family, even though he will no doubt be right back on here: Re: Relationship to nix-snapshotter and prior art This is original work, though very much built on prior innovations. Our approach hooks into the upstream containerd runc shim to pull the FloxHub-managed environment and bind-mount the closure at startup. The key distinction is that we use", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Run Nix Based Environments in Kubernetes"}, {"id": 735104912, "item_id": 45944057, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45944057", "by": "dlahoda", "date": "2025-11-16", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "incremental fast rebuilds, generating basic pod configs are good things.", "excerpt": "seems similar to this https://github.com/pdtpartners/nix-snapshotter so kind of allowing pull images from nix store, mounting shared host nix store per node into each container, incremental fast rebuilds, generating basic pod configs are good things. and local, ci and remote runs same flows and envs.", "context": "", "use_case": "building container images from Nix", "switched_from": "", "story": "Run Nix Based Environments in Kubernetes"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["lightweight containers from nix", "building container images from nix"], "compared": [{"slug": "nix", "name": "Nix", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45876884", "title": "Run Nix Based Environments in Kubernetes", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46313033", "title": "Systemd v259", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"recommend": 2}, "2025-12": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {}}, "versions": [], "version_unnamed": 0, "family_ref": null, "runs_on": null, "lines": [], "quotes": [{"id": 741054689, "item_id": 46315918, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46315918", "by": "madjam002", "date": "2025-12-18", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "create super lightweight containers using nix-snapshotter", "excerpt": "Definitely don't recommend going down this path if you're not already familiar with Nix, but if you are, a strategy that I find works really well is to package your software with Nix, then you can run it easily via systemd but also create super lightweight containers using nix-snapshotter[0] so you don't have to \"build\" container images if you still want the flexibility of containers. You can then run the containers ", "context": "", "use_case": "Lightweight containers from Nix", "switched_from": "", "story": "Systemd v259"}, {"id": 735155282, "item_id": 45947205, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45947205", "by": "jeremy_flox", "date": "2025-11-16", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Tools like nix-snapshotter, Nixery, and others have pioneered this space and we're grateful for that work.", "excerpt": "Jeremy from Flox, here, I want to chime in here so Ron can be with his family, even though he will no doubt be right back on here: Re: Relationship to nix-snapshotter and prior art This is original work, though very much built on prior innovations. Our approach hooks into the upstream containerd runc shim to pull the FloxHub-managed environment and bind-mount the closure at startup. The key distinction is that we use", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Run Nix Based Environments in Kubernetes"}, {"id": 735104912, "item_id": 45944057, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45944057", "by": "dlahoda", "date": "2025-11-16", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "incremental fast rebuilds, generating basic pod configs are good things.", "excerpt": "seems similar to this https://github.com/pdtpartners/nix-snapshotter so kind of allowing pull images from nix store, mounting shared host nix store per node into each container, incremental fast rebuilds, generating basic pod configs are good things. and local, ci and remote runs same flows and envs.", "context": "", "use_case": "building container images from Nix", "switched_from": "", "story": "Run Nix Based Environments in Kubernetes"}]}